Health Systems

Dr. Katz, the Associate Faculty Director at HGHI, serves as an Associate Physician in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is a research scientist at the Center for Global Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research over the past decade has focused on the social determinants of health-seeking behavior among people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, with the goal of developing sustainable, socio-behavioral interventions aimed at improving care for the most under-served.

Dr. Katz is trained in Infectious Diseases and received her MD from the University of California at San Francisco and trained in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and in Infectious Diseases at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She completed a fellowship in Global Women’s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and has been on staff there since 2009.

She has been consistently funded as a Principal Investigator through the National Institutes of Health since 2012 and has served as an Editorial Fellow and a National Correspondent for the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Thomas C. Tsai is a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), an Assistant Professor in Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a member of the faculty at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Tsai received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College, his medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine, and his MPH from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He completed a general surgery residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an advanced minimally invasive gastrointestinal and bariatric surgery fellowship Massachusetts General Hospital. 

Dr. Tsai is board certified in general surgery. His clinical interests include laparoscopic and robotic surgery for gastroesophageal reflux disease and paraesophageal hernias; complex abdominal wall reconstruction; and bariatric surgery. Dr. Tsai’s research focuses on health policy evaluation and on policy and systems-level interventions to improve the quality and value of surgical care.

Austin is a health economist, associate professor, and researcher; the creator, co-manager, and a primary author of The Incidental Economist; and a regular contributor to The New York Times’ The Upshot.

He has an educational background in physics and engineering. After receiving his PhD in statistical and applied mathematics, he spent 4 years at a research and consulting firm conducting policy evaluations for federal health agencies.

Austin is now the Director of the Partnered Evidence-based Policy Resource Center (PEPReC) at the Boston VA Healthcare System, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He is also an Associate Professor with the Department of Health Law, Policy and Management at Boston University’s School of Public Health. In addition, he is an Adjunct Associate Professor with the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Austin is a Senior Associate Editor for Health Services Research and serves on the editorial board of The American Journal of Managed Care. He is also a member of the New England Comparative Effectiveness Public Advisory Council.

Austin has authored numerous peer-reviewed, scholarly publications, many relevant to health care financing, economics, and policy.

In addition to regular contributions to The New York Times’ The Upshot, he writes for the JAMA Forum.

Liana R. Woskie is a PhD candidate in Health Policy and Health Economics at the LSE and is a Research Fellow at the Harvard Global Health Institute. Her dissertation focuses on the evaluation of health system performance with a focus on person-centered care and autonomy; using this work to quantify human rights violations.

Prior to her PhD, Liana served as the Assistant Director of the Harvard Initiative on Global Health Quality (HIGHQ). In 2015-16, as an extension of her role at the Institute, she coordinated the Harvard-LSHTM Lancet Report on the Global Response to Ebola. More recently, she worked with Irene Papanicolas and Ashish Jha on an NASEM commission to quantify harm caused by poor quality healthcare in LMICs and a series of comparative health system performance evaluations in high income countries, with published output in JAMA, the BMJ and HealthAffairs. Current COVID-related projects include: 1.) Assessing the impact of social distancing policies on changes in aggregate human mobility, and 2.) Developing a risk score-card to mitigate reproductive health sequalae from COVID-19.

Liana holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University and completed an MSc at the LSE and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Prior to joining the Institute, she worked with the U.S. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and was a Global Health Corps Fellow at Partners In Health. As a Thomas J Watson Fellow Liana also worked with, and studied, iterations of the Community Health Worker model in over ten countries including Rwanda, Bangladesh, India and the United States.

As Associate Director of Programs, Megan is responsible for HGHI’s Programmatic agenda, oversees the Fellowship programs, and manages the Institute’s day-to-day operations. In this role, she brings together partners across disciplines, sectors and geographies to engage in critical conversations that identify gaps and articulate tangible solutions. Her team drives toward impact through fostering novel partnerships, producing groundbreaking research and disseminating educational content.

Prior to joining HGHI, Megan worked with the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma where she coordinated a portfolio of projects on global mental health. She has conducted research on the intersection of the built environment and mental health and explored how complex geopolitical environments impact access to health services. She holds a Master’s degree in epidemiology from the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health and BA in sociology from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana.